• Next week, the National Cathedral hosts Seeing Deeper – they’re taking out the chairs, and the scaffolding will be gone, so you can feel (and photograph) a cathedral that looks “a lot like it would have during medieval times.”
• Rest in peace, Concepcion Picciotto, and thanks to Biketripper for adding this great photo of her to our Flickr pool.
• We told you about the National Park Service opening a position for a new Ansel Adams last December; now NPR interviews the agency about what the photographer will do. (The lucky person will be announced in a few months.)
• Photographer Kevin Abosch just sold a photograph of an Irish potato for 1 million euros to an anonymous European businessman.
• Finding Vivian Maier, the crowdsourced documentary about the street photographer whose work was unknown until hundreds of thousands of her photos were discovered a few years ago, is coming to Netflix on February 28.
• This cat sticks his tongue out for concentration while taking his selfies.
• To some, it was as if she had met a celebrity rock star. To others, this woman looked pretty terrified. In fact Robin Roy is one very eager supporter of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
• “A picture is worth a thousand words. The Soviet Photobook reminds us how many of those words can be lies, handsomely delivered” – an interesting review of this nine pound propoganda photobook by Exposed-alum Pat Padua.
• When Electrolux closed its factory in a small Iowa town, residents learned how globalization is more than just a buzzword tossed about during presidential caucuses.
• Renowned for her photographs of jazz and rock legends of the 1960s and 70s, Leni Sinclair has been announced as the Kresge Foundation’s Eminent Artist of 2016.
• A Norwegian chain of Arctic islands is seeking to turn numbing cold and total winter darkness into a draw for visitors who usually only venture north for the midnight sun during fleeting summers.
• From pinstriped suits to sporting successes – and life on the farm in wartime – images from the Bank of England’s photo vaults.
• Photographer Corinne Botz takes us inside the bizarre world of simulated doctor-patient relationships.
• The “Postcards from Home” project, run by Kotryna Ula Kiliulyte, features nine Glasgow-based artists’ photographs of their homeland, printed as actual postcards.
• For more than 2,500 out-of-service New York City subway cars, the bottom of the Atlantic is the final destination after they were enlisted for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s artificial reef program.
• A fashion photographer takes these clever subversive selfies (though the gif bits are a little creepy).
• This adorable sloth tried to cross a road In Ecuador, but got stuck half way.
• A wonderful gallery of the piglet saved from the snowstorm by a Chevy Chase family, and then adopted by the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary where he’s now a warm and snugly pig in a blanket.

Stay tuned over the coming weeks as we gradually reveal details of the March 10 grand opening of our 10th annual show at the Carnegie Library, hosted by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.! Meanwhile, back at the links ranch:

• The Phillips Collection has started running monthly Instagram contests offering a chance to win “an array of prizes,” as Exposed DC alum Caroline Angelo discovered this week.
• Applications are now open for the Fourth Annual New York Portfolio Review, where editors, curators, gallerists and book publishers will conduct two days of private photo critiques.
• The Alexia Foundation is accepting applications from individual photographers for its Professional Alexia Grant Program.
• “Leila Alaoui, a French-Moroccan photographer whose hauntingly beautiful photographs explored themes of migration, cultural identity and displacement, died on Monday night from injuries sustained during a terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.”
• The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders relied on the power of photographs to persuade, enrage and motivate.
• Life magazine never ran these striking images by Gordon Parks of what it was like to be black in 1950s America.
• Extraordinary images of the cruise ship Concordia by Jonathan Danko Kielkowski. The German photographer swam out to where the ship – which ran aground off Tuscany in 2012 with the loss of 32 lives – is moored.
• In his series “A General History of Timeless Landscapes,” Ross Paxton captures British people on top of tour buses look generally displeased.
• At first glance, the people in Kyle Cassidy’s portraits couldn’t look more dissimilar from one another. They’re different ages, races, and genders, and they come from all across the United States. But they all have one thing in common: guns.
• Areinha, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, was abandoned by mining corporations and is now a no-man’s land where small groups of rural workers try their luck with manual techniques.
• These once-lost frames of history shot by photographer Ron Haviv are seeing the light of day for the first time.
• What happens when a lake dries up entirely? In the case of the Lake Poopo in Bolivia, the Andean nation’s formerly second largest after the famed Titicaca, the answer is nothing short of devastation.
• “It just looks so strange to plop a lizard onto a couch, or a parrot in a car. What do they make of this environment?” Areca Rose’s series “Housebroken” documents unusual pets in domestic settings.
• This rescue cat was adopted and raised by pack of Siberian Huskies, who are all now “best friends”.

Congrats again to all of the winners of our 10th annual photo contest! We are busy planning the best party we can possibly throw you on March 10 and hope all of you will join us. Let’s get to the links:

• Hop on it: Staff photographer positions don’t open very often these days. Washingtonian Magazine wants YOU.
• The Washington Post has a special feature about D.C photographer Chris Earnshaw, and his Polaroids of the devastated city in the 1970s.
• The New York Times Lens blog published a two-part story with new research on the life of Vivian Maier.
• David Bowie died this week at 69; Al Jazeera America has one of the better photo galleries from his life. Made all the more sad because AJA shuttered its entire division this week, laying off hundreds. The Guardian, meanwhile, covers Alan Rickman’s life in pictures. RIP, you brilliant men.
• “If you were there when the Hindenburg caught on fire, and you took a picture of it, that’s a great photograph. But you’re not a great photographer, because you can’t repeat that in everyday things. What a great photographer does is, they are consistently able to make something in a style that’s personal to themselves.” PBS talks to photographer Ken Van Sickle about what makes a photographer now that everyone can take pictures.
• An Instagram “power user” took a video of what his notifications look like (when he has them on).
• Photo editor Elizabeth Krist is retiring after 21 years and editing over four million photos at National Geographic. See her top ten favorite stories from over the years.
• In the upcoming publication “Notes for an Epilogue,” Tamas Dezso photographs the vanishing world of old Romania.
• Scroll down the list of finalists for the annual American Society of Magazine Editors awards to see the Feature Photography picks in The California Sunday Magazine, Politico, New York, Vanity Fair, and W.
• Gloria is cute as hell and probably does more on three legs than you do on two. You can adopt her from the Washington Humane Society, Georgia Avenue location.

A massive thank you to everyone who entered our 10th annual contest – we received a record number of submissions this year! Look for the winners announcement on Wednesday at noon. Until then, feel free to hum the Jeopardy theme to yourself and sink your teeth into this week’s appetizing assortment of links.

• Celebrate 35 years of the 9:30 Club with this awesome photobook featuring images by lots of familiar local names, including Exposed DC alum Kyle Gustafson, who has two photos on the cover. Kyle recently posted his best concert photos from 2015.
• Attention urban gardeners: Washington Gardener magazine’s 2016 photo contest is open through January 22.
• How have the “Photography Encouraged” signs at the Renwick affected visitors’ experience with the art?
• A local Houston news station started a photo gallery of the fog covering the city this morning.
• WV Public Radio’s Inside Appalachia discusses what happens to a community when outsiders come into Appalachia and take photos of people there.
• The editors of Slate’s Behold photo blog highlight “the five best photo stories you might have missed this year.”
• The Humble Arts Foundation susses out the most popular photobooks in 2015 from 42 “best of” lists.
• To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Kamoinge Workshop has published has published “Timeless: Photographs by Kamoinge,” a survey of its evolving and wide-ranging work and an important contribution to the history of photography.
• The Financial Times published a special issue on science and photography.
• The cryophile winter swimmers club is based in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk and Reuters photographer Ilya Naymushin spent time with some of its intrepid members as they took their icy swim in the Yenisei river.
• Polish photographer Zofia Rydet knocked on 20,000 doors over two decades to find out how her fellow citizens lived.
• It was dangerous for anyone to capture life in Chile under Pinochet – let alone a woman determined to show society’s underbelly. Paz Errázuriz’s photographs of outcasts, fighters and circus performers are both haunting and fascinating. (NSFW)
• A beautiful portrait of the small city of Saint-Louis, which once stood as the capital of Senegal and Mauritania for nearly 100 years, and is one of the oldest colonial cities on the continent.
• Starlings from Russia and eastern Europe winter in Israel, swooping, pivoting and soaring, putting on a display to shame any aerobatics team.
• A selection of photographer Joel Sartore’s stunning portraits of monkeys, taken from his ambitious, decade-long Photo Ark project documenting endangered species.

Here’s your last edition of Friday Links for 2015. At Exposed DC, we’ve spent a wonderful year enjoying the images from so many talented photographers living in the D.C. area. We threw a big party at the new Capital Fringe headquarters last March for our 9th annual Exposed DC Photography Show, met up to watch the once-in-a-lifetime flyover of World War II aircraft, worked with some generous volunteer teachers who taught many of you some new skills at our Knowledge Commons DC photography class series, and have gotten to know tons of you through our monthly happy hours. We look forward to 2016 and celebrating our 10th anniversary exhibit with you all — submit your photos by January 6 to have your work featured in the exhibit — and doing whatever we can to foster and encourage local photographers.

• The City Paper’s Louis Jacobson picks his top nine photographic images (plus one video project) exhibited in the D.C. area in 2015.
• National Geographic revealed the winners of their 2015 photo contest, with the grand prize going to James Smart for his shot “Dirt” which shows an anti-cyclonic tornado touching down in open farmland in Colorado.
• Aperture looks back at a selection of their 2015 features, from in-depth conversations with William Klein and Miyako Ishiuchi to a secret history of Japanese photography.
• A collection of some of the best books of photography from this year, as selected by Teju Cole and editors of The New York Times magazine.
• “Each photograph selected for TIME’s Top 10 photos of 2015, carefully culled from thousands and presented here unranked, reflects a unique and powerful point of view that represents the best of photojournalism this year.”
• The Guardian takes a closer look at five fake photos that went viral in 2015.
• “Trees and bees confused in Washington, D.C.” Capital Weather Gang’s Kevin Ambrose headed for the Mall to document the effects of the recent spring-like weather.
• SFGate has a photo gallery of this elephant seal determined to cross North Bay Highway in California. She DGAF.
• Quit taking images of beautiful sunsets. You’re better off looking for the bizarre. Scientists have uncovered exactly what makes a photo memorable.
• A Siberian tiger and a goat that was supposed to be his lunch became best friends instead.
• Fans of Vladimir Putin can now spend “the whole year with the Russian president” as a new 2016 limited edition calendar is released in Russia. Make sure not to miss November’s photo, captioned “Dogs and I have very warm feelings for one another.”
• Behind the Lens: 2015 Year in Photographs. By Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably and have time to spare before feasting your eyes on this post which features over 100 incredible images.
• “The National Zoo’s small mammal house features an eclectic collection of wacky hairstyles and odd visages.” Stunning photographs by habitual Exposed DC alumna Angela Napili.